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The next partisan fight over the nuts and bolts of Marion County elections is set to kick off this week.

How to count absentee ballots - whether centrally or at each of 300 polling sites - might sound like inside baseball. But the decision could affect the amount of taxpayer money spent, confidence in the results and the time it takes to call close races on election night.

For about a decade, the county has counted early voting and mail-in absentee ballots for regular elections by sending them to each precinct's polling place on Election Day. Poll workers checked early voters off in poll books and ...